How can researchers and planners best facilitate the transition to low-carbon societies? In particular, can they initiate better dialogue in order to foster stakeholder engagement in planning, building and living in low-carbon settlements? These challenges inform a municipal planning process for a new neighbourhood in Trondheim, Norway: Brøset, as well as for an interdisciplinary research project exploring the role of action research in supporting the transition to low-carbon societies. The processes are described for identifying the central actors and applying the dialogue strategies in the early planning project phase. Researchers and planners collaborated to contribute to new knowledge production and practice to support the transition to low-carbon societies. The utility of the co-produced results is their potential contribution to both standards of rigour as well as the timely dissemination of research and knowledge sharing within and across research communities and to different stakeholders involved in the project. This case study provides interesting lessons about why and how other projects can consider similar action research processes as a viable approach for sustaining the transition to low-carbon economies, particularly in the early planning phase.

Det nye administrasjonsbygget til forsvaret har et årlige beregnet energiforbruk på 16 kWh per kvadratmeter. Dette blir dermed et av landets mest energieffektive kontorbygg. Artikkel skrevet av Mari Gisvold Garathun.

Nanotechnology and possibilities for the thermal building insulation materials of tomorrow are explored within this work. That is, we are looking beyond both the traditional and the state-of-the-art thermal building insulation materials and solutions, e.g. beyond vacuum insulation panels (VIP). Thus advanced insulation material (AIM) concepts like vacuum insulation materials (VIM), gas insulation materials (GIM), nano insulation materials (NIM) and dynamic insulation materials (DIM) are introduced and defined. The VIMs and GIMs have closed pore structures, whereas the NIMs may have either open or closed pore structures. The objective of the DIMs are to dynamically control the thermal insulation material properties, e.g. solid state core conductivity, emissivity and pore gas content. In addition, fundamental theoretical studies aimed at developing an understanding of the basics of thermal conductance in solid state matter at an elementary and atomic level will also be carried out. The ultimate goal of these studies will be to develop tailor-make novel high performance thermal insulating materials and dynamic insulating materials, the latter one making it possible to control and regulate the thermal conductivity in the materials themselves, i.e. from highly insulating to highly conducting.